Eric Harding had poured himself over the works of older and more experienced Egyptologists for years, hoped and prayed to find something on this sort of level, and now that he had it, he felt a distinct jittery excitement coursing through his veins. Because as he stood there at the entrance to the Tomb of Prince Ramuntep, he felt a distinct shudder at the cold air that swirled through the tomb - and the anticipation. This was air that had not circulated with the world above for thousands of years. And here Eric was. Standing there. The first man to breathe it, and see it mix.
The blond haired man was not exactly what one might assume a scientist looked like. Far and away from a labcoated, skinny to somewhat potbellied man, Eric stood six foot three inches tall and rippling with muscles. Far from allowing himself to go to pot, Eric had spent much of his late 20s and the entirety of his 30s rectifying the mistakes of his younger years. He had a pectoral shelf that never failed to make his girlfriends or the gays around the office swoon, tight, toned abdominal muscles complimented by visible obliques. His broad shoulders stretched any shirt he wore, and you could even see a striation right through the material - not helped by how thin material the shirts he liked to wear were. His biceps and triceps fought for room in his sleeves, and his legs aptly filled his jeans, which hugged the thick striated quads and thighs nicely.
All complimented by a fine brown jacket, well worn traveling shoes, and a face never scruffy or dry - no matter what areas Eric liked to explore.
It wasn't every explorer and field Egyptologist who attracted lovers the same way as good ol' Indiana Jones. And it didn't hurt that Eric had a bit of that kind of early Harrison Ford look to his face. Strictly speaking, Eric was enjoyed the women no matter if he was at home in the states or over here in the subject of his study. Sometimes, admittedly, in order to get ahead in the business and move forward, he needed to...not be quite so straight. Eric wasn't gay or bi - but he was no stranger to using his body to get ahead. Some men only wanted to give their money away if they could get something in return.
And this, coincidentally, was exactly one of those trips. He needed the money. And Henry Branton III was very rich, very gay, and utterly in the closet. To think! The guy took it up the ass while wearing his wedding ring!
But the method was hardly important - at least in comparison to the end result.
Prince Ramuntep was something of a warrior prince, his loss a catastrophe for his father, and it was said that marked the end for the Pharaoh. His sister bride Alu-anck-hamun it was written had fallen into a deep depression at the loss of her incestuous lover - for as twisted as the relationship was from the modern prospective, this constituted a loss on two fronts. She lost a brother - and her lover, all in one fell swoop of a Nubian's arrow.
As Eric walked down the steps into the depths of the tomb, it was clear by the art and decorations commemorating numerous battles and glories that Ramuntep was a beloved prince, a powerful warrior, and mourned by those who loved him. Gold, rubies and emeralds decorated the tomb, the spoils of his efforts. According to the stories, Ramuntep was strong - incredibly strong. Supposedly "taller than most men" at the time, and "had the body of a champion".
As Eric examined the tomb, he was quick to find a stone rather out of place. Shoving it back and pulling with those massive shoulders, Eric found a hidden passage within the tombs. Leading further - deeper - and into another room. This one bearing fewer belongings - all but the king's jewel as it were. Because within this room rested the princeling himself. His surely wrapped form laid within a great golden sarcophagus among a few other belongings.
Across on the walls and decorating stone pieces along the walls were numerous strange creatures, wrapped in their own bandages. If Eric had it right, these creatures were left here to honor specific Gods of Ancient Egypt. To guarantee their favor when the prince ventured into the hereafter.
Eric went ahead and checked near the prince's sarcophagus for any traps, and grinned when he saw there were none.
This was, after all, not a movie.
He began working with his prodigious strength upon that golden sarcophagus - thankful as he was that gold was not a particularly heavy metal. It still took him a while of pushing and shoving, knowing he should get the rest of the team down here to get things in order. But Eric was a man of ego - and he wanted to see the mummy for himself. In that mind of his, he kind of saw a sense of kinship as imaginary as it was with the prince. He was said to be well read in addition to being a brilliant and strong warrior.
And Eric was a champion of athletics and a very well studied man!
Finally!
The sarcophagus opened up just enough...to show Eric something special. The mummy laid there, wrapped head to toe. And left lying by his side was a book. Curiosity and again, ego, getting the better of him, Eric retrieved the book posthaste, noting as he did it felt like papyrus or something. Or something. It possessed little of the sandy texture of everything else. The dryness was absent. It handled every bit like a typical book made of modern papyrus. As if something had prevented its decay.
It was writ in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and as Eric propped the book open to look through, something else took hold than just curiosity.
There was something about this book that drew his attention further and further into it. The symbols and texts blurred and grew odder, starting to look familiar as his hands pushed page after page. His eyes grew fixated upon it. Trying to parse this strange and unfamiliar text. Even though that might not be wise. He bit his lip, desperate to find the secret. To ascertain what was going on in this strange book. And even as his eyes grew somewhat clouded, his voice never left him.
And in fact, as he spoke, he recited something from it.
Even though his lips never once uttered a line of Ancient Egyptian.
Even as his comprehension failed him.
It amounted to a spell, an utterance that called for soul to reune and Reanimate - for the Ka to reach back into the body, for the primal soul to breathe a new life into dusty flesh and bones. He knew not the words he spoke, or the ancient magics that flew through them, all he knew was that he wanted to see for himself. To experience - to quantify the strange and the bizarre, even as he felt it lightly prodding at his mind. The spell was beyond him, yet it worked through him to achieve itself in its target.
The young, buried prince.
Finally, when it had exacted itself, the book became completely incomprehensible again, and Eric dropped the heavy book full of oddity upon the ground near his feet. His eyes returned to normal. He blinked, and groaned - suddenly conscious of one hell of a headache. As if something had happened that had strained his mind to the absolute limits. He didn't understand what he just did, and in fact registered it as odd, missing time that he hoped was not a premonition of age related illnesses...
And as he got ready to give a call to the rest of the crew further back out in the valley, Eric didn't hear the rustling at first. His hand on his phone, pushing a few buttons, readying to make the call...and then, as he had two buttons to press, he heard it in a way that could not be denied. Could not be rationalized by the sane mechanisms of the modern day. His eyes widened. Eric slowly found himself turning around. Thinking that there had to be something---some sort of trap. Some kind of unforeseen item. That it couldn't be what his ears told him it was.
The sound of rustling, dusty old bandages and long dead flesh upon the golden edges of the sarcophagus.
But as the middle aged man turned, his scream died in his throat - and he saw it for himself. Wonder dueled with fear. For he saw the hands of the mummy, gripping the sides of the sarcophagus. For a moment, Eric simply stood there, transfixed. Watching the figure of the reanimated Egyptian stumbling, awkwardly pulling himself up out of his own sarcophagus. He moaned through the bandages, stumbling around, shifting on long dead legs now suddenly suffused with new life.
He moved like one might expect a mummy to. Leading with his arms, wavering them in front of him...at first. Then Eric saw something - the mummy attempted to pick up one of his old khopesh swords, arrayed by the wall. And rather than turn it upon Eric, or himself, the mummy held it - and began gesturing. Gesturing at his own face. Specifically...
On intuition, Eric ran over and took up the khopesh. And cut at the bandages over the corpse's mouth. A mouth full of preserved teeth showed itself - and a slowly regenerating tongue. The mummified Prince Ramuntep stumbled, finally having his mouth open...and it seemed the strange mechanism Eric had been subject to did something beyond simply reanimating the young prince. The reanimated young man groaned, "Haaah----H---Haaaaaa--Huuuu---How...?"
American English didn't come naturally to him. And it seemed like even the magic of the book didn't perfectly acclimate the Egyptian to the language of the man who found him. "Ahhh...mm...How long...? How long...?"
"How long...what, my uh, my prince?" Eric awkwardly asked. He didn't exactly know how to approach and how to address a reanimated long dead mummified Egyptian Prince, so he settled with the most sensible address by his estimation. "I uhh...by the way, my name's Eric. Eric Harding."
"Since...Since I---" Every moment he seemed to settle more to the absorbed and copied language and knowledge, "Since I---ohhh, Gods, since I died." As the prince said that, he stumbled forward. Barely catching himself. And in that moment, Eric could see - beyond the shambling and reanimated form - the confusion and hurt of a young man who was just completely and utterly lost. A lot of terminology had implications and cultural touchstones. Ones the young man was not likely to have much internal context for.
"It's been...roughly, a few thousand years..." Eric answered, and winced when this precipitated a howl of sorrow from the mummy, who rested briefly upon the lid of his own sarcophagus. If it wasn't for the fact that Ramuntep lacked proper eyes, Eric swore he would've probably been bawling at this point.
"Thousands...of years...?" Ramuntep groaned and looked himself over, shuddering as he regarded his desiccated flesh, "By Sutekh's claws, Eric, look at me. Look at what's become of me. I was...I was handsome, a man of Twenty Two Summers. I was strong. I even entertained the idea of traveling to the Greeks to compete in their Olympics! Now...Now look at me..." A glimpse down at his crotch briefly, and the prince's eyes diverted back up immediately.
Followed by him grunting and sobbing as he realized something he enjoyed using very much was now...in such a state.
"Is there anything---" Eric glanced at the book resting upon the floor.
This prompted Ramuntep to look there too, and he awkwardly grinned, showing that full grimace of preserved teeth, "The Book of the Dead, yes! It was not stolen by graverobbers as so often occurred with my ancestors. It can---it can restore...restore more of me! I'm...somewhat learned in sorcery. Help me cast the spell, recite "By Ra's Light, Imbue", and I will reward you handsomely, Sir Eric."
"So this book..." Eric said as he picked up the spellbook, evidently itself a famous cultural icon, "It should be able to...what? Get you back to---"
"At least somewhat regenerate me." Ramuntep sighed, sitting there on his own burial site, "It will take multiple emanations of the magic to restore me to my full stature. Beyond the first, it will require some doing to acquire ingredients."
Eric handed the book to the prince, who handled it gingerly - respecting the eldritch power of the priesthood that he had only somewhat studied in. The prince began to read - speaking the language of his people in finer detail than when the book had made use of Eric. The older man sat back and watched. Observing as one by one the animals kept by the side of the tomb all lit up - as if their presence completed a requirement of the spell.
Swirling masses of green smoke began to form around the prince, and Eric took that as his indication.
He began to chant aloud, "By Ra's Light, Imbue. By Ra's Light, Imbue. By Ra's Light, Imbue..." And he watched, wondering if this was all some sort of bizarre fever dream as he saw the green mists swirl and begin to suffuse into the living mummy. The withered, wretched form began to swell with power, returning to the power and strength of his body far closer to his time of death. The eyes regenerated in full, milky and seemingly dead, but moving as if they were alive.
Eric continued his chant to assist the prince, and he watched the form grow more definite. And honestly, he could start to see why the prince thought to go north to the Olympics. ...what an athlete. The Egyptian now stood closer to 6 feet 2 inches tall. Indeed, a tall man by the standards of the time. Veritably a giant. But not quite as towering now amidst the 6 foot 6 men on the basketball courts.
Ramuntep's rite ended, and he laid the book down again, looking over at Eric.
"My thanks, Eric Harding." He looked at his form, still wrapped as it was, but approaching some element of his lived experience, "The next rite should return me to my moment of death form." He exhaled on instinct. He didn't even have lungs to breathe with, not that he knew. "Ah, yes, I spoke of rewards! I am a man of my word. Stand back, and I would give you Strength, Youth or Beauty. Whichever you want most."
Eric contemplated. The Prince had some degree of power in the rites and mystical power of the priesthood, the ability - as insane as this all was - to undertake spells in such a way. He didn't know if he should play it safe, or...? He didn't know what form the spell might take.